A retail facility, such as a grocery store, an apparel store, or a departmental store, typically displays inventory items on various shelves of display racks in the retail facility. To improve the shopping experience of customers visiting the retail facility, the retail facility is segregated into various departments based on categories of the inventory items. For example, the apparel store is segregated into three departments, such as women's clothing, men's clothing, and kids' clothing departments. The display racks within each department are arranged in aisles and the inventory items are organized in groups and subgroups within the shelves of the display racks. For example, the men's clothing department may include a shirts aisle and a trousers aisle, among others. The shirts and trousers aisles include various groups of shirts and trousers, respectively, based on size and material. As the customers purchase the inventory items from the retail facility, the stock of the inventory items depletes. Further, the retail facility may launch a new inventory item for sale. In such scenarios, the retail facility places a fulfillment order from a distribution warehouse to replenish the depleted stock of inventory items and obtain stock for the new inventory item.
Generally, the distribution warehouse stores the inventory items in bulk quantities to cater to fulfillment orders received from multiple retail facilities. The inventory items in the distribution warehouse are also organized in groups and stored in racks. When the distribution warehouse receives a fulfillment order from the retail facility, a number of units of each inventory item specified in the fulfillment order is retrieved from a corresponding rack and packed in containers or trolleys for shipment.
When the shipment is received by the retail facility, operators of the retail facility fulfill the inventory items at the corresponding shelves in the display racks. Fulfilling the inventory items typically includes unpacking and sorting the inventory items. For example, when the shirts aisle in the men clothing department is after the trousers aisle, shirts need to be picked and sorted prior to trousers for fulfillment. The unpacking and sorting of the inventory items is a time-consuming process. In addition, a path followed by an operator of the retail facility to fulfill the inventory items is chosen by the operator and hence may not be an optimum choice. Further, the capacity of a trolley used by the operator to fulfill the inventory items may not be utilized properly. For example, the operator may load the trolley with shirts having medium size only, when the trolley has enough space to accommodate shirts having small size and the shelf allotted to small sized shirts is next to the shelf of the shirts having medium size. In certain scenarios, the fulfillment activities, such as unpacking and sorting, may interfere with customer activities, thereby leading to an unpleasant shopping experience for the customers.
In light of the foregoing, there exists a need for a solution that reduces fulfillment time and efforts by packing inventory items in containers or trolleys according to an optimal fulfillment sequence in the retail facility and capacities of the containers or trolleys.